Main navigation

Over the Hill Homesteaders

Preparing our lives to be homesteaders

Here at the Homestead, we live a wonderful quiet life, with lots to do and time to do it. We are John and Lisa, and we live in the beautiful Ozark Mountains in the southwestern part of Missouri. We call ourselves Over the Hill Homesteaders because of the obvious reason that we are well over-the-hill by way of age, but of course not in heart.
Lisa and I moved to Missouri just under 3 years ago, from the busy state of California where I had just finished a job doing 24/7 Caregiver work. I enjoyed that job a lot, but it was time to move on with my dream.

Hometown memories

We raised our two children in Winters, California. Winters was a small community of (at the time) 3,000 people. The kind of place you read about in books, or see on old TV shows where everybody knew everybody, and everybody’s business. We were young and just starting out. It was a great life and a wonderful place to raise our kids.

I remember we would tell the kids to be home by dinner time, and out they would go to play with friends the whole day. We didn’t have to worry about them getting lost or kidnapped by a stranger. That was a great benefit of living in a small farming community of country folk.

When the kids got to about 2nd grade age, during the summer they would go and cut apricots in the fields to make a little spending money. It was nice for us to have so many families in our community that watched out for us and our family, as we did for them.

Now our children are raising their own families in the same area they grew up in Northern California.

Lisa and I are believer’s in Jesus Christ, and have been saved since our early 20’s. We love the Lord and live our lives to serve Him in all that we do. Everything we do we do together; we love each other’s company and that works out well on the homestead.

Our lifelong dream in Southwestern Missouri

It has been our dream for years to retire and live on a property with enough room to raise some animals and have a BIG organic garden. It’s a joy for us to be able to share our wares with folks in the community. We have had an organic garden for the last 7 years, producing a good amount of food for the two of us, but now we are in the process of expanding our garden this year and perhaps looking into the possibilities of raising more animals.

It’s a wonderful lifestyle with amazing benefits

We may do projects a little slower than others, and work out the details differently, but everything works out in the end. I’ve learned over the years watching others that it’s not so important how precise and detailed the job is, the important aspect is, does it work, is it going to last so I don’t have to repair it in a couple of years, and number 1, is the wife satisfied with the end result!!

I have a different outlook on projects around the homestead then I did when I was younger. There will always be something to fix, something to build. Homesteading is a daily work, we tackle the projects as they come and with God’s help, we always get them finished and then on to the next.

Sharing our homestead experiences

We are excited to be able to share our experiences of homesteading with others who feel that this is something they might want to do now or possibly in the future. Or maybe you are someone who will never be able to start homesteading but have it in your heart to embrace it as a HOPE.

if you have a dream you have a started your homestead

measure the size of your dream – what do you want to do on your homestead

begin by allowing God to expand the territory of your dream

Whoever you are or however you fit into the equation we are so glad to become friends with you. As we move along, in time we will be sharing more and more about the busy lifestyle of a homesteader and all that goes on in our lives. It’s an amazing lifestyle with amazing benefits.

Thanks for stopping by the Over the Hill Homestead, we’ll be eager to hear your comments and get to know you, as you get to know us.